1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the handling of large bales of fibrous material, and more particularly to a means for cutting large hay, grass or straw bales into smaller sectional blocks sized appropriately for recompression or rebating for the export market, and those domestic consumers who cannot utilize the larger bales.
2. Background
Hay and other forages for feeding and bedding animals must often be transported over great distances from the place of production to the location of the animals. It is not uncommon to ship large quantities of hay and straw to dairies, feed lots, or race tracks located near or in metropolitan areas, and to other locations to where hay, grass and straw cannot be grown, or where there is limited availability of land on which to grow hay, grass and straw.
For purposes of this disclosure, the term "hay" will be used in a generic sense to describe normal hay, such as that made from alfalfa, grasses used as feed, and straw. Hay is typically harvested in the United States by use of hay balers, either the type which produce rectangular bales or round bales. The use of rectangular bales is by far the most common method of harvesting hay. An important reason for this is that rectangular bales can be easily stacked, one atop the other, whereas round bales are not so readily stacked. These bales are constructed of a pre-determined size by the bale machines within a certain normal range of densities. In determining the density of the hay in the standard field bale, consideration is given to optimizing storage life, optimizing food value of the product, minimizing damage through high or low moisture content, and the actual weight of the bale that has to be manually handled by the farmer, dairyman, or those with pleasure animals.
A traditional standard field bale is shown representationally in prior art FIG. 1. It has three distinctly different sets of sides, as shown in prior art FIG. 1. These are traditionally known as the cut sides, string sides, and ends. The difference in the sides, particularly between the cut sides and the string sides, is the inherent result of the baling process In the baling process, blades and stems of hay, grass or straw are picked up from a windrow in the field, where the material has been left to dry, and transported up and into a baling chamber. Stems or blades of the hay, grass or straw lie, as it arrives in the baling chamber, are generally aligned perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the baling machine. A platen set to one side of the baling chamber periodically presses the accumulating hay transversely into a bale forming chamber. Cutter knives are used at one end of the baling chamber to clip off the incoming hay as the platen pushes the collected hay into the bale forming chamber. In this manner there are created a pair of horizontally oriented opposing cut sides, and a pair of vertically oriented string sides wherein the stalks, stems, strands and blades of the fibrous material lie generally parallel to each other.
Once the bale is formed, it has to be wrapped with twine around the string sides where the fibrous material lies in a parallel array. If the string were wrapped around the cut sides, the bale would fall apart upon being ejected from the baling machine.
Standard field bales are stored in hay stacks. Care is taken to manipulate the bales as they are either manually or mechanically retrieved from the field and formed into the stacks to insure that the string sides on the top and bottom, with the bale resting on one string side. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that the string sides absorb much less moisture and provide a much better protective barrier from spoilage when exposed to the elements than do the cut sides. If a bale is stored cut side up, it absorbs water and spoils much more rapidly. Also, the standard field bales, typically weighing 80 lbs. to 120 lbs., are intended, at some point in time, to be manually handled. Storing them string side up gives the farmer or dairyman the strings as handles for picking up and moving the bale.
It is uneconomical and impractical to ship standard field bales overseas, or even across great land differences. The freight costs, because of the low density and high volume, become prohibitive. Therefore, a number of methods have been developed to increase the density of the hay/straw so as to minimize freight costs. The two most common methods are first to chop the hay and compress it into pellets or cubes which are approximately one inch square, and the second method is to recompress the original bale to approximately one-half its original volume, retie it, and stack the recompressed bales into standardized dry cargo ocean freight containers or railway freight cars, which can then be transported-by ship or rail.
Examples of recompression machines and methods of using them are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,676,153 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,718,335, both to Gene Ast. The recompressed bales in the prior art are retied in the same direction as the string wraps of standard field bales from which they were made, that is to say, around the string sides of the original bale. This is because the fibrous material of the recompressed bale still lies in the same general orientation that it did in the standard field bale, and given the tremendous recoil forces of the recompressed bale attempting to re-expand, if they were tied around the cut sides as opposed to string sides, the recompressed bale would likely burst, or at least an unacceptably high percentage of them would burst once free of the recompression press. A standard recompression press in commercial use today will recompress approximately 200 tons of fibrous material in a 24-hour period of time. Even at a 5% bursting rate, and it would most likely be much higher, this would result in 10 tons of burst bales and loose hay at the pressing site for each day of operation. This would be unacceptable. For this reason, the conventional prior art wisdom has been to always recompress standard field bales and retie them in the same direction as they were originally tied.
While standard field bales have been used for the recompression process, large hay growing operations have increasingly favored the "big bale" for the harvesting operation. These bales run in size anywhere from 800 to 2,000 lbs. The big bale format is preferred, simply because it is far more economical to handle these bales with automated equipment. Thus, it follows that the big bale format would be preferred in the recompression business for the same reasons. The big balers presently available for baling field crops into big bales are in the following sizes: 38".times.48".times.96"; 48".times.50".times.96"; 32".times.38".times.96", 28".times.48".times.96"; and 32".times.34".times.98".
The baling machines used to form the big bales generally operate on the same principles as the traditional standard field baler. The material to be baled is picked up from the windrow into a baling chamber, and pushed by a platen into a bale forming chamber. The big bales are wrapped with twine, in the same general manner as are the standard field bales, except that typically six equidistantly spaced wraps of twine are used as opposed to two or three for the standard field bale. There is a significant difference in how these bales are handled and stored, and that is, unlike the standard field bale which is handled string side down, the big bale is usually handled and stored cut side down. There is a reason for this. While there are competing interests, generally speaking, in the prior art, big bales are handled and stored cut side up as opposed to string side up. The most common reason for doing this is that they weigh so much that they cannot be handled manually. Equipment must be used to move the bales, and the most common equipment for picking up and moving a big bale is a fork lift truck equipped with side squeezes as opposed to standard bottom forks. The side squeezes are used to clamp on to the sides of the bale and hold it while it is being lifted, lowered, or otherwise moved around. If the big bales are stored string side out, then the fork lift squeeze breaks the string while the fork is sliding between the bales resulting in broken twine and burst bales.
The typical dimensions for a standard field bale, which may vary, are usually 16" high .times.17" wide .times.48" long. For purposes of this specification, in both the prior art and detailed description, a long bale with dimensions of 50" high .times.48" wide .times.96" long will be used. However, it should be apparent that the principles disclosed are applicable to other sizes of large bales.
The commercial recompression machines in use today are designed to accept and recompress standard field bales. If the source of supply of fibrous material to be recompressed is in the form of a large bale, the large bale must first be cut into blocks equivalent in both density and size to the standard field bale.
As shown in prior art FIGS. 2 and 3, in the prior art, large bales are cut to recompression size by means of either a sickle or a chain saw. In the prior art, great care was taken to manipulate the large bale and the pieces thereof, as they are cut, so as to create field bale size blocks of fibrous material, oriented as in the same position as would be a standard field bale about to be recompressed. That is to say, the cut blocks are oriented so that the fibrous material is oriented to be the equivalent of what would be a string side up standard field bale about to be recompressed.
This is shown representationally in FIGS. 2 and 3. As can be seen, the big bale from which a slab has been cut, if handled as usual, string side up, has to be reoriented cut side up so as to place the string on the sides, with the parallel orientation of the stalks and blades of the fibrous material in a more or less vertical, parallel, orientation. The strings of the baling twine must then be removed prior to cutting off a slab which, when laid down, is 16" high .times.52" wide .times.96" long. The slab is then cut into three sections or blocks, each of which have dimensions of 16" high .times.17" wide .times.96" long.
In using this prior art method, as can be seen, the ultimate result is the fibrous material lies in an orientation equivalent to that of a standard field bale with its string side up.
There are two problems with this prior art method. The first is that the big bale must be reoriented from its string side down position to its cut side down position prior to cutting the slabs. This is an extra handling step, and requires stoutly built machinery to pick up and rotate a 2,000 lb. bale. The second problem is that the strings must be removed from the bale prior to cutting the slabs. When this is done, typically in the prior art, the bale is first moved into and encased within a squeeze chute to hold the untied bale together as the slabs are being cut. Often times, the slabs being cut from the big bale will simply burst apart and the operator will find him or herself with 700 lbs. of loose hay representing a 16" slab cut from a 96" 2,000 lb. bale. Next, if the prior art slab remains intact as it is laid down on to a transport table for movement to a secondary cutting position where the slab is further cut into the blocks, it will often times simply burst apart during this operation
The loose hay, in the prior art, and continuing today, must be collected and re-baled by a standard field baler located at the recompression cite, before reintroduction into the system. Breakage rates for large bales as they are cut into slabs in the prior art, are unacceptable for commercial production.
What is needed is a method of cutting large bales into smaller blocks which can then be recompressed without breakage or disintegration of the blocks of fibrous material prior to its recompression.